


Coming Unplugged

by myexplodingcat



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Finished, Hurt/Comfort, Kinda Fluffy, One Shot, Panic Attacks, Programming, Trust Relationships, shippy fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-25
Updated: 2015-02-25
Packaged: 2018-03-15 01:26:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3432941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myexplodingcat/pseuds/myexplodingcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aradia's resurrection via prototyping and the addition of a physical body have given her more emotional capacity than she usually lets on or is even able to communicate, and the way Equius's code works with those emotions tends to leave something to be desired in terms of sensitivity. Unfortunately, the only way she feels comfortable solving this problem is one he definitely wouldn't like.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Unplugged

You're tinkering with the programming of an electrical weapon Karkat's been asking you to make. Apparently he still thinks Tavros is asking for trouble, hanging around with Vriska, and wants him to be better-armed. You tried pointing out that Tavros has trouble picking up a weapon that isn't that glorified snowcone-with-a-handle thing without wetting his pants, and that changing said pants (in Tavros's case) requires far too much trouble to bother with. Besides, he hasn't killed a single monster yet since he can just commune with them. Karkat doesn't care; he told you to just make the weapon. Said he's more worried about a different monster who's too stupid to commune with, and Tavros will do what he needs to do if it comes to that.

Begrudgingly, you've been working on the task in off moments, even if it is a futile one. Right now Feferi's busy solving some weird underwater puzzle crap that'll probably take the better part of the next hour or two and you're dying for something to do.

So when Trollian lights up and, upon clicking the application open, you find Aradia's trollhandle blinking back at you, she has your full attention immediately.

 

AA: s0llux i need your help

TA: what2 happeniing. are you iin trouble.

AA: its the r0b0t again

AA: its acting up

TA: 2hiit. the programming again? what world are you on?

AA: im 0n L0LCAT

TA: where2 equiiu2. why ii2nt he helpiing you.

AA: ...

AA: hes here but

AA: hes 0n the 0ther side 0f the planet and i d0nt want his help

AA: i would come to you in pers0n but

AA: actually im kind 0f freaking 0ut

TA: are you 2afe

AA: i think s0 but i cant help feeling like...

TA: wiill bee there, ju2t giive me a 2ec.

 

Apart from maybe Nepeta, you're the only one Aradia will confide in re: the lonely emotions she has left. Having a body again has done some odd stuff to her mind. You know why, of course; Equius had to program her ability to emote back in, or his chance at a relationship with her would have been nonexistent. Or maybe something more primal is going on and being revived via prototyping did something to her. Either way, she has emotions again, but they aren't well-developed, well-controlled, and she doesn't trust Equius to correct the flaws in her programming.

Which is completely valid; after all, he had tried to force her to share his romantic feelings through code. Besides, he isn't even very good at programming. There's no elegance or efficiency to his code; it's always lacking in finesse, far too straightforward. Equius's heavily brute-force programming style might be fine when it came to making killer robots, but when it comes to reconstructing the mangled, possibly-still-dead pieces of Aradia's mind, it just doesn't cut the grubsauce.

So she relies on you.

You have a hunch that she smashed out a lot more than his clumsy romance chip when she ripped out her robot heart, because quite a few bugs had turned up over the course of your adventure that you'd had to fix--always in a hurry, always furtively, while Equius was busy with Nepeta or climbing around a dungeon on some other planet.

Your psiioniics let you fly--literally--through the five gates required to get to LOLCAT from your current location on Feferi's planet. She's holed up in Nepeta's cave, sitting cross-legged on a rug made of some dead monster's pelt, with her oddly-shaped computer on her lap. She looks comically out of place among all the dead things and the blood/paint spattered on the walls, a robot girl in the midst of the prehistoric-looking mess Nepeta calls a hive.

She's not moving. The red light behind her mechanical eyes flickers a bit. 

"AA, are you okay?"

She nods, almost imperceptibly. "Equius is with Nepeta on LOCAS. She said I could come here." Her words sound tense, even for the robotic tones overlayed on them.

You look around again. "Thome thafe hive. What'th the problem?" 

Then you notice the way she's hunched over the computer, almost hyperventilating, and you remember what she said in the chat client and the way she still finds it easier expressing herself with words on a screen than in person.

It clicks. "Panic attack?"

She blinks.

"H-okay. Here."

Seeing you coming, she helpfully lies down on the rug and sweeps back the fine wires of her hair from the side of her head with the jack in it. You sit down next to her and connect her up to your computer. Really, you should implement a way to do this remotely, but Aradia doesn't want to do anything obvious enough for Equius to figure out that someone else has been inside her code.

As you devote most of your attention to looking for the logs to find out what triggered her panic attack, part of you is wondering if really she just wants you to be with her in person, and--oh, crap, whether being the one to settle her emotions means you're being shunted into the moirail zone. By having you fix her instead of letting Equius do it, she's also rejecting him... but in what quadrant? Does she still have red feelings for you, or did those not transfer over, or has some piece of lingering programming or some affection for the guy who built her a body or...

You blink and glance down at her face. Metallic, impassive, her eyes dimmed. She notices you've stopped working. Her eyes light up again as she focuses on you, and she blinks again, letting you know she's still there. Blushing, wondering what sort of face she caught you making, you go back to looking for the bug. There's a sort of rustling noise from her wire hair shifting as she closes her eyes and turns her face into the rug more, and the little cues of tension that her metal body is capable of letting on fade away.

You haven't fixed the bug yet; she's just more relaxed now that you're here. You have no idea what that means.

There's nothing out of the ordinary in the logs. There's an enemy registered and killed, and a bit of grist collected--not a lot, it wasn't a major enemy--and then nothing else until your chat conversation. It takes a full thirty minutes before you figure out what's going on, even though you know the structure and logic of her programming well by now. Equius has added something new. It's supposed to give her a sixth sense for when something's creeping up on her to attack, meant to sound a mental alarm bell and prepare her to attack.

Obviously the first part worked, but there's an odd bit of exception handling and she's stuck in an infinite loop of feeling like something's about to attack her.

And she came to _Nepeta's hive_ to try to cool this feeling off. Even you can't shake off the feeling of being stared at by something across the room, without any faulty programming to worsen the sensation.

You shut down the program. You thought Aradia had relaxed before but now her shoulders slump in relief. You know she can't sleep but she almost looks like she's drifting off, her breathing evening out, the movable pieces of her face sliding back into far less stressed positions. Thirty quick lines of code later, you've fixed the program, committed the changes, and restarted it with no noticeable reaction from Aradia. 

Until Nepeta shows up in the cave entrance, looking highly reluctant and kind of edgy. The reason why is apparent when Equius follows her in.

Aradia is sitting up now. She's unplugged you from her head and has rearranged her hair. An almost imperceptible bit of scowl darkens her faceplate. 

Equius isn't fooled; he can see the cord still plugged into your husktop and the displeasure is much more visible on his face than Aradia's.

"You were buthy," you say curtly. "And your programming thuckth," you add, as you wind up the cord.

Aradia doesn't show any irritation with you for your remarks, and you've gotten pretty good at reading her, robot body or no. Instead there's still that not-entirely-impassive face, and she's still staring at Equius and Nepeta without saying a word.

Suddenly Feferi messages you; she's done with her quest nonsense and wants you back on LODAG.

You notice Aradia glance over your shoulder at the message and when your eyes flick up to meet hers, her face is carefully blank again. But you can tell that it wasn't a half-second before.

Equius helps her up off the beast-skin rug, while you close your husktop and stand up to leave. You nod to Nepeta at the cave exit and turn around one last time to give a quick wave to Aradia. Equius scowls you out of the cave and Aradia looks at him with more annoyance now before waving back.

You fly off thinking that maybe you shouldn't worry so much about him after all.

**Author's Note:**

> I've tried to write Homestuck fanfic before, but it was pretty crummy and wasn't going anywhere. So here's some Arasol fluff. I kind of like the pairing, and I just have this thing about cyborgs like--they're so vulnerable to anyone who can get access to their programming since it's literally their brain (or at least part of it), so letting someone recode them and potentially break things is such an act of trust. Like an invasive medical procedure, but easier to do quietly, and it leaves less of a visible trace; would you always know what had been changed in your mind? And when Equius has already tried to pull off a form of mind control, well...
> 
> Anyway, I hope it makes sense. :x


End file.
